This blog contains assorted news and commentary on the fundraising profession and philanthropy gathered by the AFP Fundraising Resource Center.
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Friday, March 09, 2012

Mobile Marketing with 2d Codes: Success with mobile marketing starts with understanding your customers and then implementing an appropriate strategy. Although some marketers are known to embrace new technologies without first considering their full impact on the consumer.

This has proved to be true with QR codes. Notwithstanding the buzz surrounding QR codes’ ineffective applications have chilled some of the enthusiasm for their use as mobile marketing triggers. To help solve this problem, technology giant Microsoft, creators of the MS tag technology that competes with QR, has stepped forward.

The program, called Collegiate Leadership Experience, gives Northeast Florida college students an opportunity to network with community leaders and professionals and to explore complex issues facing the community.

Breidinger, then newly installed as the head of Comcast Cable’s operations in Mercer County and a member of the Rotary Club, was part of a group of Rotarians looking for something in the city to throw its efforts behind.

How often do you try a new recipe? A different gas station or restaurant? An unfamiliar magazine or radio station?
When’s the last time you talked with someone about an idea or project that flopped, or asked for constructive criticism?
When did you last seek ideas from someone with a different perspective? Or collaborate with a colleague from another department?
Who lights up your office with their energy, passion and creativity? Is it you?
Whose reactions concern you the most: your boss, the CEO, leadership or the average member?

Thursday, March 08, 2012

A Realistic Look at Annual Fundraising Campaigns : Page 1 of 2 : FundRaising Success: Part One: A Brief History Annual Giving
Participation, always a sensitive issue with trustees, is in decline at many institutions — not for lack of trying but for difficulties in simply making contact. The CDCOpens in a new window in Atlanta recently suggested that 20 percent of households no longer have landlinesOpens in a new window — and the erosion in landlines is picking up speed.

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Forging unique paths to philanthropy | The Daily Texan: e University breeds students to follow a specific path to make a difference. This path may be through medicine or the arts or even law. However, students do not seem to consider ways they can change the world other than these well-trodden paths.

But what can the University do to promote a nontraditional way of thinking when it comes to philanthropy? One thing it can do is to connect students with stories such as Boyette’s to promote a other ways of thinking. Professors need to share stories of inspiration in their lectures to encourage this style of thinking.

Chang School Fundraising Management Student Brings New Skills Back To Work: Last fall, when the inn came under threat of closure due to proposed budget cuts, Jamie decided to learn more about fundraising so she could try to create a fundraising strategy and save the historic site: she enrolled in the Certificate in Fundraising Management program at Ryerson University’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Form 990 – Threshold Requirements Reminder: As the time for calendar year nonprofits to file their annual tax return approaches, many nonprofits will need to remember which Form 990 their organization is required to file. As a refresher, the Form 990, Form 990 E-Z, and Form 990-N filing thresholds depend on the exempt-organization’s revenue and assets as follows:

Board Fellows Programs Give M.B.A.'s Taste of Nonprofits - US News and World Report: When he arrived at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University in 2010, Estrada-Reyes decided he wanted to serve the community by volunteering with a nonprofit organization. Through Cornell's Johnson Board Fellowship Program, he joined the board of directors of the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, N.Y., and has spent the past year developing a comparative analysis of comparably sized community theaters.

Ikea’s Kamprad Is Europe’s Richest in Billionaire Index - Bloomberg: n 2009, Kamprad went to court to change Stichting’s Ingka IKEA’s philanthropic goal to one that provides opportunities for youth in the developing world. According to Heggenes, between 2009 and 2011, the IKEA Foundation made donations worth about $235 million to support disaster relief and provide philanthropic aid in Kenya, Somalia, Haiti and China. Last year it announced the goal of reaching an annual donation level of $135 million. A separate foundation, the Kamprad Family Foundation, supports research and education, mainly in the Sm�land region of Sweden.

Eric Lanke: Leadership is a System Capacity: That's the other big lesson I got out of the "How to Be Open" chapter in Humanize by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant. Here's the key passage, pulling directly on the work of Peter Senge, and again, the emphasis is mine:

Monday, March 05, 2012

Post-Recession Charitable Pledges to Hospitals Slow, Jeopardizing Future Fundraising Efforts: WASHINGTON, D.C., (March 6, 2012) – As the United States and Canada emerged from the Great Recession, charitable pledges to nonprofit health care organizations slowed in fiscal year 2010, jeopardizing the ability of health care systems in both countries to generate philanthropic funding necessary to meet their long-term, construction, equipment and patient needs. These and other findings were contained in two reports published by the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) based on its detailed Performance Benchmarking Service survey of fundraising activities in both countries - which for the first time examined a full year’s post-recession fundraising by U.S. and Canadian health care organizations.